Chapter Text
Miyuki held the rim of his solo cup in between his teeth absentmindedly, feigning interest in the spectacle in front of him.
His teammates cheered as Haruichi won in beer pong, the second baseman smirking quietly as their first baseman chugged the bitch cup–god knows what they put in there–his expression souring, then turning green.
Knowing what came next, Miyuki darted out of the way as his teammate barreled past him to the bathroom. Kuramochi had extended the party invite to the entire Meiji team, so they decided to pregame together before heading over.
“What’s up? You love watching me win pong,” Haruichi said slyly, coming to stand beside his senpai. Miyuki rolled his eyes at him. Okay, maybe he had lost the previous round to him. In a landslide. He was out of practice. Right. He turned to see Haruichi was still giving him an odd grin.
“What?”
“Nothing. I think it’s time we get going-”
“Not until Miyuki drinks this!” Their first baseman cut in, seemingly recovered from the bitch-cup incident. He thrust a shotglass into his hand, filled with god knows what. Miyuki sighed, but downed the entire thing, at which his teammates cheered.
“Alright, let’s go!” Someone called from the door. That was how the night started.
The buzz in Miyuki’s head was pleasant, almost like a fuzzy blanket. When he dragged his gaze to the right, his brain was a few seconds slower. He was definitely sauced. Despite popular speculation, he was a lightweight compared to most of his teammates.
He stumbled along with his teammates, trusting whoever was at the front to direct them correctly. Despite the alcohol circulating his system, the tightness in his chest from earlier was still there.
The cool night breeze picked up, kissing his flushed skin. He took a deep breath.
“Oi, hello? We have to cross, senpai,” Haruichi said next to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. “It’s right there.”
He gestured to a house that was unmistakably the right one. Loud music and laughter poured out of the windows, and drunk/high/both people were stumbling around outside.
They were greeted by the sight of about thirty people crammed into the living room. Clouds of smoke sat in the air in a haze, the smell of sweat, vapes, weed, and beer circulating around the room. Two guys with their shirts off barrelled past them, one of them accidentally shoulder checking Haruichi. Miyuki immediately steered him away.
The sharpness of the Kominato brothers’ tongues and general devilish tendencies increased tenfold when they were under the influence, and Miyuki was not going to catch a case tonight.
“Hey! Look who finally got here!” The pair turned to see Kuramochi beaming at them. The shortstop was wearing a bright blue t-shirt with a giant winking clementine front and center. The words “Hey cutie~” were typed out in comic sans underneath.
Both Miyuki and Haruichi looked pointedly at the shirt before erupting into laughter.
Kuramochi closed his eyes for a second, clearly embarrassed. “I lost a bet, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.” He admitted begrudgingly. That sent the pair into further stitches. Kuramochi pounced on Miyuki, wrestling him into a headlock until the brown haired boy cried uncle, tears leaking out of his eyes from laughing too hard.
“You like his new shirt? I picked it out for him!” A gleeful voice called out above the music.
Miyuki pushed Kuramochi’s arm out of the way to see Sawamura making his way over to them. The pitcher was dressed in a black tank top, his toned arms on full display. Muscles rippled under his tanned skin as he pushed past a group of overexcited guys. His hair was tousled, and there was a slight flush to his cheeks from the alcohol and the heat of the room. Miyuki found himself staring, so he looked away abruptly. What the hell was going on? His senses were dialled to 11. It was that bitch cup from earlier. Probably.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you cheated! You’re normally so bad at Old Maid,” Kuramochi shouted, letting go of Miyuki to go kick Sawamura instead. He gave his senpai a shit eating grin.
“A magician never reveals his secrets!”
He laughed boisterously when Kuramochi punched him in the arm. The two did their usual back and forth, but much to the disappointment of Miyuki and Kuramochi, Sawamura wasn’t as easy to rile up anymore since coming to college. Spending too much time with Haruichi gave him a smart mouth, the two had mused.
Haruichi took one look at the doting smile on Miyuki’s face and rolled his eyes.
“Yoh-san, let’s go get some drinks,” he said in his older brother’s voice, causing the older player to jump. After taking a moment to recover, the shortstop glared at him, then began leading him in the direction of the kitchen.
“You know I hate it when you do that!” Kuramochi hissed as he went.
Haruichi gave Miyuki a light push towards Sawamura as he brushed past, then paused to mutter something in the pitcher’s ear. Said pitcher’s smile dropped, and was replaced with an odd look Miyuki could swear was…embarassment? He wasn’t sure, Sawamura’s face always looked good.
Haruichi clapped Sawamura on the shoulder and left the flustered pitcher with Miyuki. Once Haruichi and Kuramochi were out of earshot, Kuramochi turned on him. “You didn’t use the signal!”
“I know,” the younger player said with a smirk. Kuramochi raised a hand to muss up his hair as revenge, but thought better of it after remembering what happened the one time he teased Ryosuke-san when he was drunk.
“Do you think those two dumbasses will finally get a move on?” He mused instead, glancing in their general direction.
“We’ll have to see…or bet on it.”
“Sorry, I’m all done with bets for the day.” He gestured to his attire.
Meanwhile, Miyuki was trying his best to focus, whatever he had drank earlier was hitting him fully now. Sawamura was talking animatedly about something, probably baseball related. He laughed loudly at something he had said. Miyuki smiled dumbly at him. This close up, he could see his dark eyelashes dusting his cheeks. He’d always thought Sawamura had nice eyelashes.
“-pai? Miyuki-senpai?” Sawamura had stopped talking, he was staring at Miyuki with a concerned expression on his face. His brow was furrowed, Miyuki wanted to reach out and smooth it out. Oh fuck, what?
“Hey? You good? How much did you drink?” He put a hand on his shoulder. The contact burned, in a way that…Miyuki didn’t know.
“Clearly not enough,” he muttered, grabbing the drink in Sawamura’s other hand and downing whatever was left.
“Hey,” Sawamura complained, grabbing the now-empty cup back.
Miyuki burped, then giggled. Sawamura’s face smoothed out from concern to amusement. “I forgot, you’re a lightweight, aren’t you?”
“Allegedly. Not true.” Miyuki slurred his words.
“Alright, you’re cut off,” Sawamura giggled, steering them away from the living room. “Let’s go downstairs, it’s quieter there.”
Miyuki stumbled down the stairs after him. He had a dumb grin on his face, no doubt. Drinking was the best. So was Sawamura.
The basement was dimly lit, colored LED strips patched to the ceilings. There were fewer people down here, and the music booming upstairs was significantly muted.
Miyuki stumbled a little bit when someone bumped into him. Sawamura steadied him, and Miyuki was hyper-aware of Sawamura’s arm around his shoulders. He led the catcher to a corner.
“There, I can hear you now.” Sawamura said, satisfied. He started talking again, faster than before. Sawamura somehow talked even more than usual when he was tipsy, he remembered. Miyuki could hear his voice over the music now, but he wasn’t listening. He stared at the pitcher’s lips.
Drawn to them, he stepped a little closer, getting into the pitcher’s space. Despite endless teasing in high school, Sawamura had ended up outgrowing him by a couple inches by his third year at Seido.
He was close enough that he heard Sawamura’s breath hitch, whatever he was saying was completely forgotten. Miyuki grinned at that; he enjoyed making him flustered. Ever since the pitcher had learned how to talk back, it was much harder to do so.
“Miyuki-senpai?” Sawamura asked, his voice uncharacteristically hushed. His eyes darted from Miyuki’s eyes to his lips. Something unspoken vibrated in the air, materializing whatever had accumulated over the years. Their tangled breaths were all either player could focus on, the rest of the party forgotten.
Then the tension snapped, and the two leaned in at the same time. Miyuki couldn’t remember the details clearly, just the feeling of Sawamura’s lips on his. The kiss was uncertain at first, testing waters left uncharted for many years. But it quickly grew more heated, unresolved emotions sparking between them. Miyuki held Sawamura’s face, cradling it with a gentleness contradicting everything else he was doing. Sawamura ran his fingers through Miyuki’s hair. He could taste whatever shitty jungle juice they were giving out upstairs on Sawamura’s tongue, the acrid tang of vodka muted by some kind of juice.
Miyuki lost track of time, until they eventually separated, out of breath. When Miyuki made eye contact with Sawamura for a moment, the pitcher looked away sheepishly. Cute.
“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Sawamura joked, a mischievous glint in his eye.
Miyuki raised his eyebrows at him. “How long?” The younger player chuckled nervously, looking down.
Miyuki redirected his gaze gently, placing a hand on the side of his face. “How long?”
“Uh…second year of high school,” Sawamura said, rubbing the back of his neck. Miyuki paused, his eyes widening briefly before he laughed out loud unabashedly.
Sawamura blushed. “Hey! Not my fault you were always gorgeous,” he retorted, now that he had recovered his wits.
Now it was Miyuki’s turn to blush. “Same.”
“Hm?”
“Since my last year at Seido, I guess. Your second.”
Sawamura gaped at that before letting out a loud groan, dropping his head onto Miyuki's shoulder. “So you mean we waited all this time for nothing?”
“Uh…well…I hadn’t really figured it out until recently,” Miyuki admitted, flashing him an awkward grin when Sawamura pulled back only for his jaw to drop again.
“MIYUKI KAZUYA!”
“Shh!”
“We’re at a party! No one can hear us! You mean to tell me it took you years to sort out your own feelings? Here I thought I was an idiot for picking up on mixed signals, the whole time the idiot was you! I-”
Miyuki cut off his rant with a quick peck on the lips, causing the pitcher to splutter.
“Respect your elders. I got there eventually, so don’t worry about the rest. It’s about the destination, not the journey,” he said with a wry grin.
“That’s not-” he interrupted him with another kiss, flustering the pitcher all over again.
“I can’t believe it. I’ve found a way to shut you up!” Miyuki exclaimed with exaggerated glee.
Sawamura pouted at him, reminiscent of his childish antics from high school.
Miyuki laughed. “We should probably head up, Mochi and Haruichi are probably going to find us so we can dip soon.”
Sawamura gave him a gooey smile. Miyuki braced himself for some kind of sappy statement straight out of a romance manga.
“Okay, but real quick-”
Safe to say, they were occupied for the next thirty minutes.
When the pair eventually made it back up, Sawamura was affronted to find their two former teammates completely unbothered by their absence.
Haruichi and Kuramochi took one look at their matching swollen lips, rustled hair, and mussed up clothing–poorly readjusted–and Kuramochi swore, palming over a twenty to Haruichi, who smirked victoriously.
“What the hell is this?” Miyuki asked indignantly, significantly more sober than he had been about 45 minutes prior.
“Well, well, well, looks like you two finally manned up and stopped dancing around each other. WAIT! I have to collect from Tetsu-san and Jun-san as well. Remind me, Haruichi.” Kuramochi said casually.
“Haruichi?” Miyuki asked in disbelief.
“The only person unaware of what was going on was you, senpai,” Haruichi said bluntly with a smile. “Everyone got sick of watching, and I got tired of listening to Eijun-kun pine”–
“Harucchi you traitor! That was in confidence!”
“-so I decided to get this moving along.”
“With my help! Don’t forget,” Kuramochi chimed in.
“Hm, I’ll give you 12 percent of the credit.”
Kuramochi grumbled, but was enjoying Miyuki’s flabbergasted expression far too much to object.
“Alright, well, let’s go! Burgers are calling my name, you two are boyfriends now, congrats or whatever, you’re welcome, it’s about time,” Haruichi listed off, clapping his hands with finality, steering Kuramochi towards the door.
Miyuki sighed, accepting his fate. Sawamura just laughed at him, so he made sure to mess up his hair real well–although he had messed it up pretty good earlier already.
Sawamura shoved him off playfully, then grabbed his hand, dragging him outside. As they went, to his surprise, teammates from both of their teams whooped and congratulated them as they passed.
Bewildered, he asked Sawamura, “How far do you think this runs?”
“I have no idea. Don’t be surprised if your coach congratulates you tomorrow,” Sawamura warned. Miyuki scrunched up his face at the thought, sending Sawamura into a fit of laughter.
The four of them walked off in search of greasy food. Kuramochi and Haruichi revealed they had planned out this evening on purpose, but Miyuki wasn’t even surprised anymore.
The four of them joked, messed around, and laughed like they were in high school again. But Sawamura’s hand was in his now, and it felt like all the puzzle pieces had finally fallen into place.